Some peo­ple find it em­bar­rass­ing to go in­to a phar­ma­cy to pur­chase con­doms or fem­i­nine prod­ucts.

But Pen­ny Med Phar­ma­cy be­lieves it has a way to help peo­ple get around that with its new ecom­merce plat­form.

“This elim­i­nates that em­bar­rass­ment and gives your pure pri­va­cy,” di­rec­tor of de­vel­op­ment Aaron Cheng told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“Be­cause I am in this in­dus­try I don’t get em­bar­rassed but I can un­der­stand why sex­u­al health prod­ucts are a bit of a taboo,” Cheng said.

Pen­ny Med opened its first phar­ma­cy on Fred­er­ick Street in Port-of-Spain in June 2013.

“We start­ed as a brick and mor­tar busi­ness but al­ways with the in­ten­tion to be more than just a phar­ma­cy,” Cheng said.

“More than just a phar­ma­cy” is ac­tu­al­ly the com­pa­ny’s tagline.

“We have al­ways tried to di­ver­si­fy and to of­fer some­thing new,” Cheng said.

Just un­der three years lat­er on Valen­tine’s Day, Pen­ny Med opened its sec­ond lo­ca­tion in San­ta Cruz.

And in 2019 the Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain branch was opened.

That year Pen­ny Med al­so launched its e-com­merce plat­form.

“We al­ways had the in­ten­tion to go in­to an e-com­merce space, but in or­der to do that we need­ed to build some lev­el of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and we did not want to just of­fer some­thing to mar­ket that was not ready,” he said.

“Be­fore COVID ac­tu­al­ly we had put this in­to place so when we opened the third branch we ba­si­cal­ly had to change the in­fra­struc­ture of the busi­ness,” Cheng said.

Cheng added this was not some­thing that was done over night.

“There was lots of tri­al and er­ror, teething but we are there we have launched,” he said.

Cheng said Pen­ny Med can boast of be­ing the first of­fi­cial e-com­merce phar­ma­cy in T&T.

An ac­tu­al phar­ma­cy is pro­vid­ing the prod­ucts de­liv­ered, Cheng said.

When the pan­dem­ic hit and re­stric­tions were put in place Pen­ny Med said its flag­ship store was af­fect­ed.

“The pan­dem­ic re­al­ly hit us for six there be­cause every­thing around there was closed be­cause that does not ser­vice a com­mu­ni­ty it ser­vices busi­ness­es. There were more pi­geons on the road than peo­ple so we were re­al­ly hit there,” Cheng said.

“We tried our best to man­age the loss and I am proud to say as a or­gan­i­sa­tion we did not send any­one home we kept with our peo­ple and that is our fo­cus. We want to re­al­ly por­tray who we are, which is we try our best de­spite the con­straints,” he said.

Cheng said shop­ping on­line would be ben­e­fi­cial to cus­tomers’ pock­ets.

“We as a com­pa­ny had to show them the ad­van­tages of part­ner­ing with us and how that will for­ti­fy or strength­en not just our brand as Pen­ny Med but al­so their prod­ucts as well be­cause our in­ten­tion is to make you save more by shop­ping on­line,” he said.

“Save time, save mon­ey, save every­thing. So you can lit­er­al­ly sit there or­der and know that your time has not been spent or wast­ed and you are lit­er­al­ly pay­ing less just to shop on­line,” Cheng said.

Cheng told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian the ma­jor­i­ty of cus­tomers utilise the plat­form us­ing their mo­bile phones.

“There is no ini­tial re­quire­ment for you to reg­is­ter there is no fee to reg­is­ter how­ev­er when you do add to cart or go through the process of or­der­ing you have to reg­is­ter be­cause that is the on­ly way we would know where to send the items and it is al­so a ful­ly func­tion­ing e-com­merce site so yo have to pay first,” he said.

“We are go­ing along the lines of what the gov­ern­ment wants, a cash­less so­ci­ety,” Cheng said.

Cheng said the Pen­ny Med site is com­pa­ra­ble to those used by in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

“For a lo­cal site when you com­pare ours to the in­ter­na­tion­al ones it is smooth, it is easy and that is what we want peo­ple us­ing the site not to be flus­tered or be con­fused. We do bank trans­fers al­so. We don’t take cash,” he said.

Cheng said Pen­ny med has been see­ing a growth in the en­gage­ment on the plat­form.

“The first week we did a re­al so­cial me­dia push we had 850 en­gage­ments. We have looked at the sta­tis­tics we tweaked it a bit and with­in 12 hours we went to 8,900 en­gage­ments. With­in 14 hours we went to 10,000. And this morn­ing we had 30,000 views and en­gage­ment and that is fan­tas­tic,” Chen said.

“It is re­al­ly more about brand pres­ence and get­ting it in­to your per­son­al space so that you know it ex­ists. We are very much in the phase of a brand pres­ence. We are a phar­ma­cy first so peo­ple are look­ing at main­ly the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, over the counter vi­t­a­mins and sex­u­al health prod­ucts,” he said.

Cheng said apart from this Pen­ny Med al­so sell toys and games.

“Peo­ple liv­ing away can now ac­tu­al­ly go to the site and buy items and have it sent and de­liv­ered to their friends and fam­i­ly any­where in T&T that is a big, big change that is a shift in mar­ket. For us we are very proud of it be­cause we are re­al­ly tak­ing a brick and mor­tar busi­ness throw­ing it in­to e-com­merce and al­low­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the gen­er­al pub­lic in T&T,” he said.

“Suc­cess for us would be in­creased on­line sales via e-com­merce to keep in line with what’s go­ing on with the coun­try in terms of so­cial dis­tanc­ing do­ing our part, be­ing re­spon­si­ble, try­ing to show oth­er ways in which our fel­low Tri­nis and To­bag­o­ni­ans can re­al­ly stay in line and have ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the med­ica­tion and not be af­fect­ed,” Cheng said.

To help pro­mote the use of the e-com­merce plat­form, Cheng said free de­liv­ery is be­ing of­fered for pur­chas­es over $500.

“In terms of med­ica­tion, this is achiev­able so it is ac­ces­si­ble and easy so we will take the hit in terms of de­liv­ery just to en­sure and show that we want to do our part in be­ing re­spon­si­ble and giv­ing ac­cess,” Cheng said.

“We want to see our­selves as the lead­ers in the e-com­merce phar­ma­cy di­vi­sion and we wel­come oth­ers to join in this kind of com­mu­ni­ty where the e-com­merce is con­cerned be­cause the more peo­ple in the mar­ket ob­vi­ous­ly the bet­ter it is for the con­sumer,” he said.

Cheng said on­line busi­ness­es are the way for­ward.

But if you think the name Pen­ny Med is re­minds you of an­oth­er pop­u­lar store that has now branched off in­to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Cheng said there is no re­la­tion.

The name Pen­ny Med was cre­at­ed by the own­ers as recog­ni­tion for a pre­vi­ous busi­ness they owned some 50 years ago.

“There is a sen­ti­men­tal val­ue. So it not a copy of Pen­ny­wise to be clear,” he said.